The art of covering cyber security as a business story

Jordan Robertson joined Bloomberg three years ago and is one of a team of reporters at Bloomberg News dedicated to covering the cyber security beat.

Based in Washington, Robertson spent 10 years on the West Coast covering technology for the San Francisco Chronicle and The Associated Press before heading east. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California at Berkley and a bachelor’s degree from San Jose State.

He spoke with Talking Biz News about the evolving beat of cyber security and how it combines industry, company and trend coverage. What follows is an edited transcript.

How did you get into covering cyber security?

It was almost an accident. I was covering semi-conductors and enterprise computing – companies like Intel and Sun Microsystems – and as part of that security was a sub-beat. Hacking was becoming a real issue, but it wasn’t what it is now a decade later. My editors said to look into it whenever possible.

Then I started going to hacker conferences in Vegas, which was fun. The subject kept getting more interesting and became the focus of my beat. The demand for securities stories kept growing and growing. It’s a rapidly evolving industry.

When I came to Bloomberg, a big part of my mandate was to cover and add to the cyber security beat. Now, we’re all working together in one bureau, which has been helpful. With all of the intelligence services and other agencies in DC it was a natural fit. There’s a huge collision between Silicon Valley and DC.

How do you find information and stay current in such a rapidly changing environment?

Security is an area that’s so fast moving. It’s also very source dependent. That’s a benefit of DC; there are lots of security people passing through all the time.

It’s different than covering a company. It’s no less intense on source building. Security is so broad; you don’t know where next great tip will come from. You could get a call from an independent person you’ve never heard of or talked to and they can call with great tip.

It’s also important to meet with a lot of people and get your name out there. Great tips come from everywhere. It’s source development. Reading Twitter and other sites are good for ideas, but sources are critical. People are finding cool stuff all the time and you want to be the one they call.

With all the different types of breaches from banks to healthcare information to retailers, what should the general public find most concerning?

The public often gets the wrong perception about what they should be worried about. Ten years ago if you had your card stolen or bank account breached, it used to be months of headaches and a huge job to fix. Now, that’s not the case.

Now, if you get your credit card stolen, the fraud detection is so good that fewer than 5 percent of the numbers stolen are successfully used for fraud. The banks monitor it for you.

Now the far bigger problem is breaches like Anthem and those we’ve seen that involve social security numbers. If you’re social security number is compromised, that’s a huge problem. Your Social Security number follows you from birth to death and it is hard to change.

Few people wind up absorbing fraud charges, but with Social Security numbers criminals can do a lot from filing fraudulent tax returns to obtaining health care coverage. As consumers we have pretty good protections like that from the credit bureaus. And there are services, such as LifeLock that offer additional protections. That’s often lost in the coverage of breaches.

What advice do you have for other reporters?

If you’re interested in covering cyber security, go to conferencea and get to know people. If you’re passionate about the story, it will be much better and you’ll get to know more people. There are so many specialist publications and news organizations that need specialists.

The model used to be for journalists to be generalists. Now there is a lot of value in being a specialist. You need the background. There are lots of jobs and organizations looking for those with particular knowledge and skill sets. Become an expert in something, so you have something to add to coverage.